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SAC faculty members (pictured from left to right) Colin Gunckel, Yeidy Rivero, Caryl Flinn, Giorgio Bertellini, Markus Nornes, and Matthew Solomon pause to sign their newly released books after they introduced their publications last Thursday night. SAC and U-M faculty, staff, graduate students, and friends shared in this scholarly celebration at Literati Bookstore. 
THIS WEEK'S EVENTS
2015 UM Contemporary Chinese Film Series  
Tuesdays in September and October 
Michigan and State Theaters 
7:00 p.m. -- Free Admission 
Sponsored by the Confucius Institute and Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at UM, Electric Shadows: 2015 Contemporary Chinese Film Series will feature six exciting Chinese films released in 2014 and 2015.  SAC Professor Markus Nornes helped curate the festival, which begins today, September 22nd, at the Michigan Theater with the screening of The Golden Era, Ann Hui's epic feature recounting her short life -- from her childhood in the Heilongjiang Province to her final days in Hong Kong's Repulse Bay.
Image from The Golden Era, 2014
Senior Lecturer and Author Ofer Ashkenazi Visits the University of Michigan 
Thursday, September 24
3308 MLB 
4:00 -5:30 p.m. -- Free Admission 
Join us as Ofer Ashkenazi, Senior Lecturer and the Director of the Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gives a talk entitled "The Invention of the German National Landscape by Jewish Filmmakers, 1918-1968." 
"My talk analyzes the ways Jewish filmmakers in Germany appropriated conventional Heimat imagery in order to participate in and influence the constitution of the German nationality. In manipulating and de-contextualizing the Heimat iconography, prominent Jewish filmmakers were able to introduce the aspirations and fears of integration-seeking outsiders -- i.e. German Jews -- into mainstream perceptions of German identity." 
Sponsored by Germanic Languages and Literatures and co-sponsored by the Department of Screen Arts & Cultures, the Department of History, and the Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, this event is free and open to the public. 
MARK YOUR CALENDARS
Author's Forum Presents - Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Televison, 1950-1960: A Conversation with Yeidy Rivero and Ruth Behar
Tuesday, September 29
Hatcher Graduate Library, Gallery 100
5:30 p.m. -- Free Admission 
Join SAC Professor Yeidy Rivero as she presents her book in conversation with Ruth Behar, Victor Haim Perera Collegiate Professor of Anthropology and Women's Studies, as a part of the Author's Forum.  In Broadcasting Modernity, television historian Yeidy M. Rivero shows how television owners, regulatory entities, critics, and the state produced Cuban modernity for television. The Cuban television industry enabled different institutions to convey the nation's progress, democracy, economic abundance, high culture, education, morality, and decency. After nationalizing Cuban television, the state used it to advance Fidel Castro's project of creating a modern socialist country. As Cuba changed, television changed with it. Rivero not only demonstrates television's importance to Cuban cultural identity formation, but also, she explains how the medium functions in society during times of radical political and social transformation.
The Author's Forum is a collaboration among the U-M Institute for the Humanities, the University Library, and the Ann Arbor Book Festival. 
Comedy Abounds on UM Campus! 
Screening of We Are Young Followed by Q & A with Alex Richanbach
Friday, October 2 
MLB 1
7:00 p.m. - Free and Open to the Public 
We Are Young, (image from Funnyordie.com)
On Friday, October 2, Alex Richanbach and Ben Sheehan, writers/producers from Funny or Die in Los Angeles, will be on campus. They will be conducting an exclusive workshop with Terri Sarris's sketch comedy class on Friday afternoon. Later that evening, however, at 7:00 p.m. in MLB 1, there will be a free and open to the public screening of Richanbach's feature film We Are Young (a romantic comedy about twenty-somethings, described on IMDb as "a film about guys who act like girls and girls who act like guys") followed by a Q & A with writer/director/actor Richanbach.
SAC Alumnus A. Brad Schwartz Presents Broadcast Hysteria at the Detroit Film Theater 
Thursday, October 29
Detroit Film Theater Auditorium
7:00 p.m. -- Free Admission 
On Halloween Eve, 1938, Orson Welles's brilliant radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds caused unprecedented mass hysteria --
or did it? 
In honor of Welles's centennial year and of the broadcast's 77th anniversary, join A. Brad Schwartz as he re-examines this landmark moment in history in his presentation of Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News.  Although Welles's live dramatization of The War of the Worlds did not cause mass panic, Schwartz will show that the broadcast was nothing less than history's first viral media phenomenon -- a dire warning for the age of Twitter and 24-hour news. 
This event is sponsored by Friends of the Detroit Film Theater. 
THIS WEEK'S FEATURED PHOTO
Johannes von Moltke in Coversation with Edgar Reitz at the Goethe-Institut in New York 
NEWS
SAC Grad Student Vincent Longo Invited to Participate in the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy Next Month  
Vince Longo will attend the Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, Italy, this October as a member of the festival's collegium. Each year, the festival selects twelve collegians from around the world and mentors them through special presentations, meetings, and networking opportunities. Following the festival, each collegian is required to write an essay based on information and film screenings only available by participating in the collegium and attending the Giornate. This year, the 34th Pordenone Silent Film Festival runs from October 3rd to the 10th. 
SAC Welcomes Back James Gindin Visiting Artist and Screenwriter Tom Benedek 
For the past ten years, Tom Benedek has been a James Gindin Visiting Artist at U of M, co-teaching SAC 427, Advanced Screenwriting Seminar with Jim Burnstein. For the past three years, Tom has also taught SAC 308, Screenwriting for Non-Majors, a course he currently has this term.

In addition to his many notable contributions and works, most recently, Tom has been writing an original screenplay for an independent producer, former Warner Brothers Home Video President, Warren Lieberfarb. Additionally, Tom has been working on DIY film projects - including an adaptation of A Dream of Undying Fame by Louis Breger, a non-fiction book about the development of the talking cure by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud. During the spring and summer, Tom studied with Joan Scheckel and participated in a "Summer Camp" Collective with actors and filmmakers at the Joan Scheckel Space in Hollywood, where he workshopped the Undying Fame project. 

Also a photographer, Tom's work can be viewed at Tombenedek.com. His recent novel, Peloponnesia, was excerpted this Fall on Nikki Finke's new fiction website, Hollywooddementia.com.
SAC Faculty Spotlight on Professor Johannes von Moltke
Johannes von Moltke spent his summer organizing academic events, traveling for research, and writing. He once again organized the German Film Institute, which met for the 14th time this year in May. During a trip to Germany, he visited various study abroad providers and programs, did some more research at the German Literary Archives in Marbach, and gave a talk in Stuttgart. He also submitted the final version of his manuscript on Siegfried Kracauer to the University of California Press, and gave a talk on Fascist Cinema at the University of Toronto where he caught a few films at TIFF but was sorry not to overlap with Phil Hallman’s annual visit to the festival. This September, he had a memorable encounter with the director Edgar Reitz, whom he interviewed via Skype for an event at the Goethe Institut in New York. His essay on John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, and Siegfried Kracauer’s Film Theory just came out in the anthology Thinking in the Dark: Cinema, Theory, Practice (ed. Murray Pomerance), which also includes Matthew Solomon’s contribution on Sergei Eisenstein.
SAC 2015-16 Honors Cohort
Spotlight on Nisreen Salka 
A dual degree student in business administration and screen arts, Nisreen Salka often combines her creative talents and analytical mindset to explore uncharted territory in her academic and professional work. Inspired by both the creativity and logic of film production, she hopes to utilize those skills when pursuing a degree in information architecture.

Nisreen desribes her honors project as follows: "From Amazon to Microsoft, primarily technological companies challenge the traditional paths of media production, distribution, and exhibition in their exploration of the digital media space. As their innovative methods rise in popularity, contemporary media industry culture conforms to the new standards of media production they create. Under the commercialization of media in the retail space and the expansion of multi-screen viewership, the digital era heralds industry shifts in corporate structure, creative development, transmedia storytelling, and the amateur star system. [My] project will explore the aforementioned industry trends as a byproduct of digital media integration among primarily technological companies and its impact on the industry’s creative output."